


there's a universe inside your head, constellations of the things you left unsaid

by MagicaLyss



Series: A Sky Full of Stars {Irondad Febuwhump} [10]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: Drinking to Cope, Gen, Mental Health Issues, Peter Parker Angst, Peter Parker Has Issues, Peter Parker Needs a Break, Peter Parker Needs a Hug, Peter Parker is a Mess, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Tony Stark is Good With Kids, Underage Drinking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-02
Updated: 2020-03-02
Packaged: 2021-02-27 21:41:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22982659
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MagicaLyss/pseuds/MagicaLyss
Summary: Febuwhump Day 19 & 20 – Creator’s Choice & Mental DisorderPeter’s always been good at pretending.His whole life has been filled with pretenses and quieting down the words that threaten to jump out of his mouth. He’s spent his whole life trying to be small. To take up as little space as possible, to ask for nothing and be grateful for everything.Because he couldn’t take up more space in the world than he already did.(But how much can you internalize before you implode? How much pressure can you fit inside your lungs before they give out? How much can you carry on your shoulders before your body disintegrates?)
Relationships: Peter Parker & Tony Stark
Series: A Sky Full of Stars {Irondad Febuwhump} [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1619647
Comments: 12
Kudos: 208





	there's a universe inside your head, constellations of the things you left unsaid

Peter’s always been good at pretending.  
  


His whole life has been filled with pretenses and quieting down the words that threaten to jump out of his mouth. He’s spent his whole life trying to be _small_. To take up as little space as possible, to ask for nothing and be grateful for everything.  
  


Even back when he was little, too young to have to make up lies, he’d nod and smile and say it was okay that his parents were going to leave him with May and Ben for the weekend for the third week in a row. Their work came before Peter and he was okay with that. It was fine. He learned how to smile through his tears and lie through his teeth.  
  


And with May and Ben, their financial situation wasn’t a secret. So Peter tried his best to never need new shoes or jeans, convincing them that they still fit and the holes weren’t so bad. He always declined second servings of meals, never asked to go out because gas prices were rising, and he tried to convince them they he didn’t need to go to Midtown. Thankfully, he got most of it covered by the school anyway, but he tried extra hard to stay out of their way after that.  
  


Following that had been Ben’s death.  
  


With all the practice Peter had, he was good at helping May get back on her feet, on clearing away all the painful memories, on making himself as little as possible in a world that felt too big. He made sure he was doing as much as he could, chores, groceries, laundry, he’d even pick up odd jobs every now and again if he got home from patrolling to find May crying over bills she couldn’t pay.  
  


It wasn’t a lot. But it was _enough_.  
  


Even at school, he’d do more than his part in group projects, let anybody copy his homework, let Flash shove him into the lockers without complaint.  
  


Because he couldn’t take up more space in the world than he already did.  
  


(But how much can you internalize before you implode? How much pressure can you fit inside your lungs before they give out? How much can you carry on your shoulders before your body disintegrates?)  
  


  
*  
  
  
After the Snap is reversed, Peter tries extra hard to make himself invisible.  
  


With Morgan around now, as much as Peter’s grown accustomed to pretenses, he refuses to fall to his own selfish pretense of being her brother. He isn’t. He shouldn’t be allowed to pretend.  
  


So he makes himself sparse, hides away in his room claiming to be tired or trying to catch up on the world that’s moved on without him. He goes to the meals he’s asked to attend, not wanting to create conflict by declining. He pushes his food around his plate until he’s allowed to disappear.  
  


Tony _wants_ him to stay. He says it every time May brings up what they’re going to do. They don’t have much, just a box or two that Pepper salvaged from their apartment before it was emptied and repopulated.  
  


But Peter’s not good at understanding whether it’s because he’s made himself so small that his presence doesn’t mean a thing, or if he hasn’t made himself small enough and his loudness is enough to cause guilt and sympathy.  
  


As a solution, he makes himself smaller.  
  


He says the things he’s meant to say, he jokes about how he would’ve been graduating MIT by now, he eats the food that’s offered to him mechanically, he smiles and he laughs and he offers olive branches of conversation where necessary.  
  


But everything big – the things like the nightmares, the sleeplessness, the panic attacks hidden behind closed doors, the pressure behind his ribcage, the emptiness swallowing his words – it all stays tucked carefully away from view.  
  


He stays quiet and he stays small and he doesn’t ask for anything.  
  


  
*  
  
  
MJ and Ned don’t contact him. No calls, no texts, nothing from them.  
  


The only reason he knows they’re alive is they liked the stupid meme he sent to their groupchat so they knew he was okay too. Otherwise, nothing from them.  
  


They don’t contact him, so Peter doesn’t either. He stays quiet.  
  


May goes out to the city without him with Pepper and Morgan to search for a new job and go apartment hunting. There’s only so long she can sleep on the couch before she feels like she’s intruding. Peter has his own room. Supposedly a ‘guest bedroom’, but the Star Wars poster on the back of the door and the framed photo of him, May, and Ben sitting on the desk, give away the truth.  
  


When he wakes to find the cabin empty, even Tony heading down to the lake to dip his toes in the water, Peter feels heavy, in a way that he can’t remember _how_ to keep pretending.  
  


He lays in the bed that isn’t quite his and he stares up at the white ceiling, trying his best not to think of the nightmares that plagued his sleep ruthlessly or his body threatening to implode if he isn’t careful.  
  


Out the window, Tony kicks at the water, pant legs rolled up to his knees and the leftover pieces of bread from a loaf in his hand as the fish and the birds come up to greet him. Peter wishes the world felt simple like that. Like he could dip his feet in water and feed the animals.  
  


He wonders, somewhere in the only working part of his brain, the rest of it all caught up in webs of depression or anxiety or falling into the pit of memories, if this is a pretense for Tony too. If he’s trying to fit all the Stuff into his lungs, all the pain and the hurt and the shaking trauma, and he wonders if Tony worries about imploding or disintegrating under the pressure.  
  


He knows how to spot pretenses with May who tries to stifle her tears in the throw pillows long after the sun sets like Peter can’t hear everything around him. It was what she did after Ben died and what she did when the financial troubles threatened to drown her.  
  


This isn’t a pretense for May. She’s okay.  
  


Peter’s not, but if he’s always living in pretenses, how is anyone supposed to spot it?  
  


  
*  
  
  
He finds himself on the rooftop of a building, far away from the cabin and all the lies it holds.  
  


(Pepper pretends to love him, Morgan pretends like she doesn’t know he’s not her brother, May pretends like she wants Peter around when he knows she never has, Tony pretends to care, pretends to understand, pretends to love him like his own.)  
  


Peter understands lies because it’s _all_ he’s ever known.  
  


(How many times can you lie before you forget what the truth is? How many times can you build yourself up in pretenses before you forget who you really are? How deep can you fall into the enigma of yourself before you lose sight of what’s real?)  
  


He takes another sip from the bottle in hand. He thinks it’s May’s bottle of raspberry Bacardi, but he’s dizzy and his chest is fuzzy and he doesn’t think it’s too important to remember how much he’s had, which bottle he’s on.  
  


He thought that Tony had thrown away all his alcohol, especially after Morgan was born, but there was still alcohol in the cabin. Tony’s over ten years sober now, but the alcohol was still there. For Rhodey or Happy, maybe. A few bottles must’ve been Pepper’s.  
  


This is the opposite of being small, of being quiet, of being invisible.  
  


This is loud. This is taking up space.  
  


Stealing alcohol when he’s only seventeen, in a universe where he should be twenty-two by now. He doesn’t know if it counts. He didn’t ask. He left a sloppy note to the family saying he was headed over to Ned’s and didn’t need a ride.  
  


He left the suit under his bed. Touching it makes him feel like he’ll turn to dust again, disintegrate.  
  


The roof is cold and damp where he presses his forehead, struggling to catch his breath. The sky above is filled with stars and space. A long time ago, he would’ve smiled and pointed out the constellations and at peace with the never-ending sky. Now, panic engulfs his head, chest heaving for air, hands trembling around the neck of the bottle of rum.  
  


He takes another desperate gulp of the alcohol, burning at his throat as tears pool in his eyes. Thanos took _everything_ from him, his life, his family, his friends, his home, five fucking _years_ , and now he’s taken Peter’s love of space from him?  
  


Fuzziness fills him up as he takes a few more mouthfuls of rum, reveling in the way it dissolves the webs of anxiety his brain gets trapped in.  
  


It’s impossible not to hear the Iron Man suit flying his way, but it’s surprisingly pretty easy to ignore it, pulling his knees up to his chest in a fetal position with his forehead against the roof so he doesn’t have to see the sky.  
  


“Kid…” Tony says as soon as his feet are on the roof, suit dissolving around him. (Peter almost _wants_ to dissolve again in some twisted way. Disintegrate so he can stop feeling the pressure in his lungs and the weight of the world pinning him to the rooftop.)  
  


“Don’… Don’t yell at me,” Peter slurs, refusing to look anywhere but at Tony’s shoes nearing his head and at the Bacardi bottle still clutched in his arms.  
  


Tony sighs long and hard, and then he sits on the roof by Peter’s feet, leaning against the ledge. He puts his hand on Peter’s ankle like it’s enough to ground Peter’s swirling head.  
  


“I should’ve known,” Tony says, voice quiet and soft. He doesn’t take the bottle from Peter, but his gaze is enough to make Peter not dare take another sip. “I should’ve known that this would be hard on you, kid, and I’m sorry I didn’t check in as thoroughly as I should’ve. I don’t know… I guess I just got caught up in the idea that you were _here_ , at all, and I thought I could put off all the talking that needed to be done.”  
  


Peter stays quiet. It’s an effort to clamp down on the apologies, on the guilt that swirls in his throat. It’s almost too much work to grab the words that catch in his voice box and die away. He has to stop being loud. He has to take up less space.  
  


“I should’ve paid more attention to how bad it was getting. It was right in front of my face, under my nose,” Tony continues. His voice is marred with guilt and he tips his head up to the sky. Peter wishes he could look too, but the last thing he needs is the loudness of a panic attack rushing over him if saw the sky.  
  


Tony falls quiet for a long while, rubbing his thumb over Peter’s ankle and keeping a careful eye on the Bacardi bottle cradled against the boy’s chest. The empty Jack Daniels bottle and the two empty bottles of Pepper’s Rosé, and the collection of empty mini-bottles, are all discarded in an awful pile beside Peter like every bottle represents something wrong with him that he’s trying to disintegrate.  
  


But there’s also the three unopened bottles of vodka by Peter’s head, the two cases of beer bottles that go untouched. An obvious reminder of how far Peter would’ve gone if Tony hadn’t arrived.  
  


“I thought that after the battle, it would all go back to sunshine and rainbows or whatever bullshit. You know, retired and living off the grid, my kid back. I don’t think I believed it, but god, I hoped it would all just be okay for once,” Tony says. “But that’s not very fair, is it? I had five years to recover from what happened, and you’ve had, what? Three weeks?”  
  


Peter shoves the lid off the half-empty Bacardi, prepared to drink until the fuzziness in his chest takes over his mind, but Tony’s hand covers his own.  
  


He looks up, burning eyes meeting Tony’s awfully pitiful frown, space shining around him, and Peter pushes the bottle at Tony’s chest, tucking his head into his arms with a miserable sob. He doesn’t want to _feel_ anymore. He wants to take up so little space, be so quiet, so invisible, that he simply ceases to exist.  
  


“Oh, kid,” Tony murmurs, voice soft and gentle, and Peter can imagine it’s the same voice used to soothe his real child who’s probably back home wondering where _her_ dad is. His hand lands in Peter’s hair, gently massaging his scalp and pulling his fingers through the knots in his unruly curls.  
  


Peter, for his part, squeezes his eyes shut, and tucks his knees tighter against his chest, trying his best to stifle the sobs that threaten to escape him. He’s being _loud_ and all he ever wants to be is quiet, spaceless.  
  


“Buddy, you know alcohol isn’t the way to fix any of this,” Tony says, voice washing over him like a blanket. “You should know better than anyone that drinking isn’t going to solve this. You should’ve come to me, asked for help. You know I’m here for whatever you need, right? I don’t like you bottling this all up.”  
  


(Because how much Bad Stuff can he bottle up inside his chest before he explodes? How many nightmares does he have to live before he can no longer tell the difference between dreams and reality? How much trauma can a child endure before their whole world collapses before their eyes?)  
  


Peter chokes on a sob, biting down on the inside of his cheek as he whines, “Supposed to be quiet. Needa be quiet, Mis’er… Mister S’ark.”  
  


“No, buddy, you don’t have to be quiet. You never have to be quiet.”  
  


“Take up too much space,” Peter tries to explain, rolling onto his back to stare up at the sky surrounding Tony even as it makes panic grip his chest through the fuzziness of the alcohol. “Tryin’ to preten’.”  
  


Tony’s shaking his head, stars glittering around him. “You’re allowed to take up as much space as you want to, Peter. There’s no limitations to how loud or how much space you want to take up. I _want_ you to take up space, okay? Because that means you’re here and you’re real and you’re alive.”  
  


Tony doesn’t seem to understand that Peter _can’t_. He’s always been trying to downplay everything, that he’s been stuffing all the Bad into his lungs and now he doesn’t remember how to breathe or how to think without trying to think around the Bad and the webs within in his head.  
  


“Jus’ wanna be a good kid, Mister Stark,” Peter cries, hiding his face against Tony’s knees because he can’t bear to look at the sky anymore. “Jus’ wanna be quiet and keep pretending.”  
  


“You don’t need to pretend, kiddo, I promise. Nobody’s going to stop loving you if you ask for help, if you get the help you need. You’re never in the way, bambi. We _want_ you.”  
  


This is his entire world flipping upside down because he’s never _not_ pretended. He’s never let himself be louder than necessary, to voice any of the thoughts the spin in circles around his head, to ask for the things that he needs because he doesn’t want to be in the way.  
  


“But wha’ if nobody loved me in the firs’ place,” Peter slurs, the insecurities pouring out of him drunkenly. “What if… what if I this is jus’ another pretense?”  
  


Tony’s hands are gentle and cautious as they lift Peter up to look at him properly. Tony’s eyes are watery, the stars shining back at Peter.  
  


“We love you, kid. I love you. It’s not a pretense. It’s not a lie. I couldn’t lie to you about that. I love you. I missed you every single day for those five years. I never stopped missing you, I never stopped loving you. I visited your memorial plaque in Queens every weekend and brought you flowers. Dandelions because-”  
  


“They’re my favourite,” Peter finishes, eyebrows crinkling.  
  


Tony lets out a short, quiet laugh. “Yeah, kid, you told me you liked them because you thought that if you didn’t, nobody else would.”  
  


“And you ‘membered?”  
  


“Yeah, kid, I remembered because I love you.”  
  


It’s not a pretense, not another lie like Peter’s told himself everything else is. He understands it even through his hazy-drunken mind, even through the webs of anxiety that threaten to entrap him, even through the pit of insecurities. He _understands_.  
  


And this is just the beginning of unravelling all of the foundations that Peter’s built himself upon, all of the ways he’s told himself that he doesn’t matter, all of the reasons he gave himself to make himself invisible, to take up less space, to be out of everyone’s way, to be quiet. This is only the start of pulling it all apart.  
  


Even after all that, they’ll start rebuilding on the destroyed foundations, they’ll build Peter back up into the skyscraper he deserves to be. They’ll rebuild him using kindness and self-love and the space he didn’t think he deserved to have.  
  


(The thing with all of it is that it doesn’t matter _how much_ you can store within your lungs, how much you can bottle within yourself, how much pressure and weight you can internalize, how many lies you can tell, how many pretenses you can build. It doesn’t matter. Trauma is never a competition. What matters is the aftermath. What matters is how to let go, how to move on, how to get help. What matters is learning how to heal.)  
  


**Author's Note:**

> this is a big oof yikes i don't even know anyways
> 
> [My Tumblr](https://lyssismagical.tumblr.com/)


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